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the word inflation

2022-04-09T17:27:43.543Z


Suddenly, we don't know. We are afraid of the future. We live in one of those times when the future is not a promise but a threat | Column of Martin Caparrós


It's hard: we inflate or inflate or inflame or who knows what;

we do not know but we know that it is a problem, we are worried.

Inflation is a very basic metaphor: a balloon that inflates, inflates, inflates more—until it finally bursts.

Inflation, that hindrance of past times or surpassed countries, has once again interfered in our lives as solvent, peaceful, moderately satisfied Europeans, to say no: that perhaps we are not what we believed.

The word

inflation

is not only worrying;

it is also ugly.

And misleading: its origin is not what it seems.

The word inflation comes from inflating, of course, but not prices, as we might believe, but the currency.

The word

inflation

began to be used in economics around 1830, the United States: in those days scores of banks issued banknotes, supposedly backed by their gold or silver reserves.

It was the market in all its splendor.

But it turned out that many of those banks did not have the treasures they claimed to have, that is, their bills were not worth what they said they were worth.

Those banknotes were inflated —because of the lies of their issuers— and they gradually depreciated.

That was the first inflation.

Later, the States controlled the issuance of their currencies and were able to manage their inflations: when they needed to, they issued banknotes, which sometimes had backing and sometimes did not.

When they didn't have it, those bills were worth less and less, that is: more were needed to buy the same things, prices increased.

That is, now, inflation: that the currency is worth less or the merchandise is worth more.

That things, after all, cease to be clear.

I'm almost Argentine: when I read that Europe is worried about an expected inflation of 6% or 7% per year, it gives me the most stupid outburst of pride, that of the conceited victim: they don't know what serious inflation is.

I come from a country that has known how to produce hyperinflation, brutal leaps of money into the void, and that in the last 10 years has maintained an average of 30% or 40% per year and expects, for this, to approach 60%.

That expendable knowledge taught me that the worst thing about inflation is uncertainty.

(I remember those days of 1990 or 2001, when the "hyper" made things have a price in the morning and another in the afternoon: when money was a convention without conventions, when you had to spend it now because later who knows, when nobody knew how hard he worked, when everything slipped like water through his fingers.)

And now, suddenly, we don't know.

We are afraid of the future.

We live in one of those times when the future is not a promise but a threat: the environmental threat, the demographic threat, the political threat, now the military threat.

We don't know what we want, we only know what we don't;

we do not expect positive changes, we hope to be able to control or lessen the negative ones.

For that we take refuge in the certainties that we can: religions, laws, flags, economic calculations.

Knowing that I earn so much, that I need so much, that I will be able to pay for electricity and gas and food for the children and maybe, if anything, a bigger TV or new clothes.

Being able to do the accounts and foresee: it is little but it reassures.

For many, the business is clear: I do not expect great things in exchange for not fearing great problems.

Inflation comes to break that pact —and more, allied with the war.

Inflation is a banal, immediate form of that threat from the future: another way of convincing ourselves that this is about to burst.

Inflation forces you to live in the present, which is the most difficult moment.

The present moves, it escapes you: more the less you have.

Inflation, it is obvious, punishes more those who have less.

If you are more or less left over, having electricity increased by 30% or potatoes increased by 10% is a hassle, which at best infuriates you;

If you don't know if you'll arrive or not, it destroys your humor, your foresight, your life.

Inflation, after all, is another name for inequality: it bothers you and me, it blows him or her up.

Inflation, like everything else, is unfair.

Justice, perhaps, would consist in all of us having the same problems.

It is a minimum program —which, as yet, we have never achieved.

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Source: elparis

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